Happy Attachment Disorder Day

I'm about to leave the house to work my Mother's Day shift at the restaurant. A respiratory infection is trying to station itself, and my mood is sour. One thing that annoys me, is that I am expected to wish all the mothers at my workplace a happy day.

My mother has been gone more than six years. I don't think I have once thought to myself, "gee, I really miss her." She was a complicated person, with an unblemished soul and an assortment of personality disorders.

My father characterized her as the ultimate "earth mother," a phrase that was popular in the 1960's. She personified fertility and motherhood. When I was born, the first thing she said to my father was, "we have our Matthew." I have an abiding conviction that baby Matthew was wanted, and loved. It's my saving grace.

I was the first son, and the third child. Certainly I was a prince for a time.

Around my fifth or sixth year, my father left the house, and never came back. I don't really remember having a father in the house, except a vague recollection of lots of yelling fights, and a vivid recollection of having my rear end spanked so hard, my sister and I were bawling on our beds with our red asses in the air.

So instead of a two-parent lottery winner, I got a single-mother scratch-off ticket. She had to work full-time, and raise five of us. There were no extended family in the area to help raise us. We did have a live-in for awhile, until my oldest sister was pressed into duty.

If a parent's job is to prepare their children for independence, I will say that while we were unequipped for adulthood, we were eager to leave. As long as I was little and vulnerable, there was continuous fear of physical punishment for what seemed arbitrary reasons. A slap across the face could come out of the blue. A belt against a bare bottom was not rare. When I had physically grown a bit, the physical abuse was replaced by verbal, emotional abuse. I was always amazed how ugly she could speak to me, then answer the phone with sugary sweetness.

I think a lot of my detached emotional style is because of the abuse, and some of it was being raised by a parent with a New England background. There was no safe space to have unwanted emotions in our house.

Which is why it is hard for me to admit that I hated my mother, and I still do. I would like to be able to forgive her, but I don't want to continue to repress my feelings. I have developed a dismissive-avoidant attachment style, with a little fearful-avoidant thrown in for good measure. Emotional self-sufficiency is one of the windmills I constantly tilt at.

In case the reader is wondering if the fact that I despise my mother, extends to all women. Am I a -gasp- misogynist? Truthfully, today I would answer yes to that question. I don't trust women. I fear women. And yes, there is plenty of hate in there.

Thankfully for my soul, I am incapable of acting on my hate. As I believe that I was wanted and loved at my most critical developmental stage, I believe this to be true of every human being. As such, I am an extremely empathetic person. I am so sensitive, that I can detect the most subtle distress cues. As a defenseless child who always had to be on alert, it was a necessary adaptation.